olestra
noun
olestra is a noun meaning “A fat substitute (a glyceride of sucrose) that cannot be easily digested and therefore adds no fat, calories, or cholesterol to food products; also…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled O-L-E-S-T-R-A and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 37 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of olestra is olestras.
What does olestra mean?
noun
- 1
A fat substitute (a glyceride of sucrose) that cannot be easily digested and therefore adds no fat, calories, or cholesterol to food products; also used as an industrial lubricant.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce olestra?
Olestra has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of olestra
- olestras plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is olestra?
Olestra appears about once in every 37 million words in written English, the 187,122nd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does olestra come from?
1980s, from (p)ol(y)est(e)r + -a.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).